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American Association for the Advancement of Science during 

 Christmas week, elected the following officers for 1937: R. E. 

 Coker, president; H. de Forest, vice-president; Orland Park, 



secretary-treasurer. 



The Museum of Natural History of Syracuse University was 

 destroyed by a fire which destroyed the top floor of Lyman Hall 

 on January 1. The fire was first observed in the office of Dr. 

 Ernest Reed, head of the department of botany, who is in 

 Venezuela on a scientific expedition. Among the many speci- 

 mens destroyed, some of them irreplaceable, were more than 

 fifty rare plants that had not yet been identified. 



The botany departments of Cornell University and Ohio 

 State University have arranged an exchange of instructors for 

 this spring. Dr. E. M. Palmquist, of Cornell, and Dr. C. E. 

 Taft, of Ohio State have been selected for the exchange. Both 

 will teach courses of general botany. 



Llewelyn Williams, assistant curator of economic botany at 

 the Field Museum of Chicago, left early in January on an expe- 

 dition of several months in southern Mexico to obtain botanical 

 collections for the museum. Work will be concentrated on the 

 Isthmus of Tehuantepec. (Science) 



